Mississippi Moon
by HealerAriel
Summary: Thirteen years after the first ones were disposed of, a new pack of werewolves has begun stalking Sabine Harvey's manor home in Oakvale, Mississippi. Features a prologue starring a cocky, teenaged Dean. You know you can't resist. No WinchesterOC romance.
1. Prologue

(A/N- Well, I've been fighting off the urge to start yet another fic, but since this fandom presents such a welcome change to my usual style of writing ridiculously long things… I figured I may as well give in to temptation. **Romance will be between OCs only, as women who get involved with the Winchester men have a nasty tendency to wind up dead on a ceiling, and I don't like killing off my characters**.)

First **DISCLAIMER** I've ever bothered to write: I, HealerAriel, do not own _Supernatural_ or anything related to it (although I wouldn't mind claiming ownership of Mr. Ackles and that drop-dead gorgeous automobile, 'cause my car sucks). I think I own Oakvale, Mississippi, but if it's a real place, I apologize firstly to the residents and secondly to the producers of _Fable_ for ripping off the name Oakvale. Lastly, I must apologize to whoever sang "Mississippi Moon" for stealing their song title. Any more copyright infringements on my part, just giggle at and then ignore.

I should also apologize for any incorrect mathematics on my part. You'll see what I mean.

* * *

_Oakvale, Mississippi, 1992_

Twenty-year-old Sabine McLeod was a blonde, blue-eyed Celtic goddess with a loaded buckshot rifle and an accent like warm honey.

At least, that was thirteen-year-old Dean Winchester's initial impression of her. It didn't change the fact she'd smacked him pretty damn hard upside the head in greeting, but it had prevented his first words to her from being "Bitch, lay off!"

Instead, he found himself gazing adoringly at the Southern belle as she berated him for trying to carve his initials in the gnarled old cypress tree in her family's front yard – something about him pissing off the tree spirits, or whatever.

"Take it easy, babe," he said, flashing what he hoped was his most charming grin. His attempt at placating her seemed to have the opposite effect.

"Don't you address me like that, little boy. You and your Daddy get your guns, and let's go kill some werewolves," she said, before turning on her heel and heading back into her parents' house.

That "little" remark was totally uncalled for, Dean decided, watching her hips swing back and forth as she walked. He wasn't _that_ much shorter than her; she only had three or four inches on him, tops!

"We really need to talk about how you behave around women, kiddo," John Winchester sighed, thrusting a shotgun and a pack of silver bullets into his elder son's arms.

"Hey, the ladies love me," Dean replied, loading the bullets into the gun. "I can't help being handsome."

John shook his head and patted Dean roughly on the back, then slung his own gun over his shoulder and went to talk to Sabine, who'd come back outside looking like a walking arsenal, complete with a machete strapped to her hip.

Oh yeah. Dean had a huge crush on this chick.

"Hey, sweetheart!" he yelled, watching with glee as her eyes narrowed dangerously at him. "Bet I can kill more of them than you can!"

"You're on, little boy!"

A buckshot round hit the ground inches from where Dean had been standing a split second earlier. He had already dashed off into the woods to make good on his bet.

* * *

"I got seven of 'em," Dean boasted at sunrise, as the three of them finished piling what was left of a pack of werewolves into a heap. John produced a can of lighter fluid and began dousing the corpses with it.

"Did you, now?" Sabine replied, shrugging off a blood-soaked over shirt and tossing it onto the makeshift funeral pyre before John took his lighter to it.

"Hell yeah, I did. And I bet mine were bigger than yours, too," he said proudly, puffing out his slim chest.

"We need to talk about your vocabulary, too, Dean," John warned.

Sabine ruffled Dean's hair. It was truly amazing what eleven hours of fighting werewolves as a team could do to one's ability to get along with a cocky teenager who actually _was_ as proficient as he thought he was.

"How in the world does your Daddy manage to fit you and your ego in the same car?" she teased. Dean grinned.

"How many did you get?" he asked, already contemplating what he'd demand as his reward for winning the bet. He wound up vetoing most of them right off the bat, with the knowledge that making any such request would just warrant a firm slap across the face for being a nasty little pervert.

"Nine or so."

Dean's heart plummeted. Well, that plan had failed spectacularly. And to make matters even worse,

"Kid, you are covered in werewolf guts," giggled the high priestess of buckshot.

* * *

The sun was high and bright in the sky by the time Sabine and the two Winchesters had gotten all the residual blood and gore off themselves – and yes, Dean discovered that he had, indeed, had actual werewolf guts all over his shirt. He had spent a good five minutes vomiting after this discovery, but decided not to admit to that unless he was on his deathbed.

"You're sure you can't stay for breakfast? Mama's really grateful that the werewolves are gone, she says it'd be no trouble," Sabine insisted as John and Dean loaded their weapons back into the trunk of their car.

"Tell your mother we appreciate the offer, but we need to get home. My younger boy Sammy's all by himself."

Dean was pretty sure his father didn't catch the look of disapproval on Sabine's face at the news that a child younger than himself had been left to his own devices for so long. He was in no hurry to point it out.

"Well, you two take care, then," she said. She and John shook hands before he got into the driver's seat and shut the door.

Sabine turned to the teenaged boy still seated on the hood of the car.

"And I think I owe you an apology, Dean. I underestimated you."

"Yes you did," he said, well prepared to deliver a wiseass one-liner; a plan thwarted when she bent and kissed his cheek.

It was a good thing he was sitting down, because his knees went weak, and he would certainly have felt like an ass if he couldn't get kissed by a cute girl without losing his footing. He made a mental note to work on this – by getting loads more girls to kiss him so that he could practice his finesse.

"You be good," Sabine advised, ruffling his hair one last time before jogging back into her house. Once she was safely out of sight, Dean allowed himself to melt happily into the passenger side of his father's car, a silly grin plastered to his face.

"I _told_ you they love me," he said smugly.

The corners of John's mouth quirked upward in amusement, and he started the engine.


	2. Maddy

(A/N- I apologize to Mr. Pratchett and Mr. Gaiman for the Good Omens reference in this chapter, and also to you AC/DC fans – I rather like them, too.)

* * *

_Five-year-old Madeline Harvey was out in the garden. Mama was inside making dinner – spaghetti, Maddy's favorite. Maddy wanted to pick Mama some flowers. Mama loved flowers. She said that the faeries loved flowers, too, and that's why she kept so many of them. Mama could see the faeries, just like Katie and Bryce and Maddy could._

_"Sorry, faeries, these are for my Mama," Maddy said, bending toward a cluster of white blossoms with her little knife at the ready._

_Maddy stopped halfway. The back of her neck was prickling. She listened carefully. The forest was silent. It shouldn't be._

_Maddy slowly pulled herself upright, casting glances around the clearing and the surrounding woods. Nothing moving; not a sound. Something was wrong. Maddy wasn't safe._

_The back door was a few yards away. If Maddy made a run for it now, whatever was out there might not get her. She hoped._

_She took a backwards step toward the door. The bushes across the clearing rustled, and a figure stepped out._

_It almost looked like a wolf. Its eyes gleamed bright green, and it almost looked like it was smiling at her with those big dripping teeth. It growled._

_Maddy screamed, and sprinted as fast as her little legs could carry her. She just barely made it inside before she heard the thing's awful body slam against the door, snarling and scratching at the wood and trying to get to the tasty little girl on the other side._

_"There's one outside!" she yelled, backing away from the door. "It's trying to get through the door!" _

_Mama came running, with two men Maddy didn't recognize close behind her. Daddy came last, looking very pale and scared, and Maddy knew why; Daddy didn't believe in monsters._

_"Man, I was hoping I'd get to try this thing out," the shorter man said, grinning at something he was holding. "C'mon, Sammy, let's go fry a werewolf."_

_"Boy, if you break my flamethrower…" Mama warned, giving him the same look she gave Katie when Katie wanted to use Mama's crossbow._

_"Maddy, you stay back with your father," said the taller man. He had a soft voice, and his eyes were kind. Maddy liked him right away. _

_There was a loud crash that hurt Maddy's ears, and then lots of guns being fired which hurt her ears even more. Daddy snatched Maddy up into his arms._

_"My God," said Daddy, staring at the dead werewolf on the tile floor, and the six or seven more that were coming out from the trees and running straight toward the broken door._

* * *

_Oakvale, Mississippi, 2005_

Sabine Harvey was awakened by tugging on the sleeve of her nightgown. She opened her eyes to see a terrified-looking Maddy standing beside her bed.

"Honey, what's wrong?" she asked.

"Mama, they're coming, I saw them!" the little girl whispered frantically.

"Who?"

"The werewolves, Mama, I saw them in my dream. I was in the garden, and there was one, and I ran inside and it broke the door, and you and a couple other people I didn't know killed it but there were more outside. Oh, Mama, it's going to be terrible!"

Sabine's mind was reeling. She and the Winchesters had killed all the werewolves in Oakvale thirteen years before, hadn't they? Or had they missed a few, and unknowingly let the remaining pack members hide in human form, biding their time until they'd bred their numbers high enough to attack again?

"When did this happen, Maddy? Do you know what day it was?"

"No, Mama, I just know it was warm outside."

_Well, naturally. It's June_, Sabine thought. She knew it was unfair of her to expect Maddy's visions to be date-specific, but still, a time frame would have helped. She had no idea how long it might take for John and Dean to get to Oakvale from wherever they were. _Unless _they_ were the people Maddy didn't recognize in her dream, which would certainly be a good sign if there's a pack of werewolves breaking down the back door._

"Maddy, the people in your dream, what did they look like?"

Maddy's little face scrunched up comically as she tried to remember the details.

"They looked younger than you and Daddy. They both had brown hair, and the shorter one was playing with your flamethrower."

_Well, we have Dean taken care of_, Sabine thought with a smirk at the mental picture of Dean Winchester – still a skinny, slightly perverted thirteen-year-old in her mind's eye – lovingly stroking a flamethrower in the face of danger.

But the fact that Maddy had seen two _young_ men had thrown her a bit. Obviously John wasn't there, and that made her nervous. Trigger-happy Dean was good to have on your side in a fight, but John had been the brains in the outfit last time. He'd been the reason they were able to find the werewolves' lair and kill the whole pack.

Well. Maybe not the _whole_ pack, after all.

"Listen, Maddy," Sabine said, lifting her little girl's chin and looking her in the eyes. "I'll call somebody who can help us in the morning, and until the werewolves are gone I want you and your sisters to stay inside the house, do you understand?"

"Yes, Mama."

"And whatever you do, don't tell your father," Sabine added, shooting a glance at her husband, still sound asleep on the other side of the bed. "I'll… try to find some way of explaining it myself."

A physics professor who didn't believe in anything he couldn't see, touch, and explain with a mathematical equation, David Harvey was terribly out of place in his own mediumistic, faerie-and-spirit-seeing family. But he loved them all dearly despite their idiosyncrasies, and that was really all that mattered.

How he would react to his wife hiring monster exterminators… well, _that_ would be an interesting conversation, to say the least.

* * *

_Out on the open road…_

"I can't believe you made us stay at that diner for _two hours_," Sam Winchester complained, more than anything just to drown out AC/DC's "Big Balls". One of these days he was going to smash and burn Dean's entire music collection…

"Dude, did you _see_ the waitress? Hell, I'd _still_ be there if I didn't have you whining at me." Sam rolled his eyes.

"How did you manage to get anything done on your own? You waste all your time hitting on women."

"Next best thing to shooting stuff," Dean replied, smirking. "You should try it sometime, Captain Purity, it's very fulfilling."

"Yeah, whatever," Sam sighed, and went back to willing the stereo to break, or eat the cassette, or cause every tape to change to Queen after a fortnight; just about anything would have made Sam a little happier.

Dean's phone started ringing, and Sam's musically-challenged brother motioned for him to turn off the radio. Sam obeyed, silently praising the caller's good timing.

Dean answered the phone with an oh-so-unprofessional "Yeah?" A second later, Sam watched a huge grin spread across his brother's face.

"You kidding? How could I _ever_ forget you?" Dean said into the phone, his voice an octave lower than normal. Sam let out an amused snort. He'd bet his soul that there was a woman on the other end of that phone line.

"Well that's because I _am_ all grown up now, Ms. McLeod," Dean practically purred into the receiver, the lascivious grin evident in his voice. Probably a good-looking woman, too, Sam decided.

Dean's grin disappeared.

"Oh," he said flatly. "_Mrs. Harvey_, excuse me… How long you been married? …Thirteen years, huh? …No way, _three_ kids? Well, that's… that's great. Congratulations."

Sam shook with silent laughter at the disappointment on Dean's face; cruel, he knew, but it was kind of a funny situation from where he was standing. Dean glared and flipped him off, which only made it funnier.

The woman on the phone spoke for a few more seconds, and Sam watched Dean's facial expression go from one of disappointment and annoyance to one of concern.

"But we got 'em all last time; we made sure of it," he said, actually sounding worried. Sam knew his brother well enough to be quite sure that when Dean was worried, the situation was likely much worse than it had originally seemed.

"Do you know how many there are this time? …What d'you mean, you haven't _seen_ them, how do you know they're there? …Babe, this is me you're talking to, nothing's gonna sound too weird," Dean assured the woman on the phone.

Moments later his eyebrows lifted in surprise. "…Your daughter _what_? …No, no, I believe you. We'll be there sometime tomorrow; depends how much speeding I can get away with. …Yes, I _know_ it's against the law," he said, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "Seeya." He shut off the phone, checked the side and rearview mirrors for cops, and then accelerated to 80.

"Another job?"

"Yeah, Oakvale, Mississippi. Middle of nowhere. Dad and I helped Sabine, the chick on the phone, get rid of a pack of werewolves in '92. She thinks they're about to make an encore performance."

"How does she know that?" Sam asked. Dean shot him a sidelong glance.

"Get this: her youngest daughter _dreamed_ about it. Apparently, the kid has visions. You should be right at home."

Sam was momentarily stunned and comforted to know he wasn't the only freak with prophetic dreams… then Dean turned the damn radio back on, and Sam went back to just wishing the stupid thing would break, and soon.


	3. Boondocks

"Let me see if I understand this correctly, Sabine," sighed David Harvey, taking his glasses off and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You have called in _monster hunters_ to help us with our _werewolf problem_?"

"Yes."

"And we know we _have_ a werewolf problem because Madeline saw it in a prophetic dream last night."

"Exactly."

David let out another sigh. While his wife was a very _intelligent_ woman, he sometimes wondered if she was entirely _sane_. Still, despite being convinced that this was all complete and utter foolishness, he knew better than to try and argue that point to the headstrong Irishwoman he'd married.

"God in Heaven, Sabine, what am I going to do with you?"

"You're going to accept that I'll always be weird, and love and cherish me until the day you die," his wife answered, seating herself in his lap and winding her arms around his neck. "Same as I intend to do with you."

"Are you suggesting that I'm anywhere near as weird as you?"

"David, you recite the laws of physics in your sleep."

"_Touché_."

* * *

As it turned out, Dean managed to get away with an impressive amount of speeding on the way to Oakvale. He'd been pulled over once, but as it had been in a very rural area – and by a very female police officer – he'd gotten off with a warning.

Being devilishly handsome had its perks.

"Are you _sure_ you know where we're going?" Sam asked. They had been on the same gravel road for what seemed like a half hour, and as far as Sam could tell, there was no sign of civilization apart from the road itself.

"Hence, 'middle of nowhere,'" Dean reminded. "We'll be at the house in a couple minutes, relax."

Bored beyond all reason, Sam stared out the window, even though there was nothing to look at besides trees. He had to admit, it _did_ look like a perfect place for a pack of werewolves; plenty of places to hide, and probably plenty of cute, furry little animals to rip to bloody shreds with their big, nasty, pointy teeth.

Sam, it should be noted, was not a dog person.

He was also getting really sick of being in the car, and was playing with the idea of finding something to whine about just to piss his brother off, when the Impala rounded a corner, bringing into view a huge plantation house.

"See? Told you it wasn't too much further."

"_This_ is the place?"

"Hard to believe something like this is hidden way out in the boondocks, huh?" Dean replied, pulling into the driveway and parking next to a Rolls-Royce. They got out of the car and headed toward the house. Sam couldn't shake the growing suspicion that Dean's eagerness to jump to Sabine's aid was based less on his heroic and chivalrous nature and more on the fact that he thought he might get paid for this.

Sam had to agree that getting paid once in a while wouldn't hurt. He'd feel bad accepting money for something like that, but at least it would be more honorable than Dean's methods.

"Man, that brings back memories," Dean said fondly, stopping in front of a large tree. Sam could see marks on the tree where it looked like someone had been carving with a knife.

"It says 'DV,'" Sam stated, wondering why this would have any significance.

"I was physically assaulted before I could finish the 'W,'" Dean explained. He momentarily considered whipping out his pocketknife and completing the deed, but he quickly reminded himself that he was much too old do something like that.

Well, too old to get away with it, anyway.

Thus, leaving Sabine Harvey's beloved cypress unmolested, the brothers Winchester went up and knocked on the front door like the civilized human beings Sam was, and Dean fooled people into believing he could one day be trained to become.

Several sets of running footsteps later, the door opened to reveal three beautiful blonde children, the youngest of whom immediately shouting,

"Hi, you were in my dream last night!"

"That was the night before last, Maddy."

"I know that, Katie-sillyhead, but I dreamed about them last night, too," Maddy explained.

"You can't keep going around telling strangers you saw them in dreams, Maddy," the third girl said. "It makes people nervous."

"And it makes them think we're weird," Katie added.

As the Harvey girls continued to chatter about what was, and was not appropriate conversation on a first meeting, the brothers agreed silently on a very important fact.

Had they been female, their father would have lost his mind.

"Kathleen, Bryce, and Madeline, things like this are what make people think I've taught you no manners." For a woman with three children, Sabine looked no worse for wear; if anything, she was even prettier than Dean remembered.

_All the good ones are taken, gay, or unattainable_, he thought, unknowingly echoing the plight of single women everywhere as Sabine surveyed him, hands on her hips.

"Well, look at you, little boy. You finally got taller than me!"

Sam snorted, and Dean elbowed him in the ribs. Sam shut up, but didn't stop smirking.

Why was it, Dean wondered ruefully, that no matter what happened, his most defining characteristic seemed to be the fact that he'd spent the better part of his adolescence at five-foot-five?


	4. Southern Hospitality

(A/N- Squee, I love reviews! They're nearly as essential to my life as coffee! (Yes, HealerAriel is a caffeine junkie) You all deserve hugs, kisses, and cookies! And if y'all have any questions, concerns, things you would die to see written in here or in something else (I'd be willing to take one-shot commissions, methinks), etc… Just let me know!)

* * *

After a brief formal introduction and a quick meal (Sabine had declared that Sam, especially, was much too thin, earning Dean a smack upside the head for not making sure the "poor boy" had enough to eat), the Winchester brothers found themselves seated in an elegantly decorated parlor roughly the size of most apartments. Dean couldn't help wondering why someone with money to burn was still living out in the woods. Hell, if it were him, he'd sell the house and get a nice, big condo in the tropics; maybe let Sammy live in the basement if he promised not to bother him.

Hot chicks in bikinis…now _that_ was aesthetically pleasing. Screw the trees.

"So, do we have a general idea of when to expect this werewolf invasion?" Dean asked, forcing the images of exotic, well-endowed women out of his mind. Sabine shook her head.

"Maddy's visions aren't that specific," she said, with a nod toward the five-year-old seer who had recently abandoned a game of Go Fish with Katie and Bryce in favor of climbing into Sam's lap. "We'll just have to be prepared."

"I'm sorry I don't know when it's gonna be," Maddy said, snuggling against Sam's chest. The little girl had latched herself onto him practically the second he walked in the door, and while he'd felt awkward at first, he'd gotten used to it pretty quickly. True, he wasn't looking forward to Dean's inevitable jokes about 'liking them young,' and psychics gravitating to each other, but… well, it couldn't be helped, and Maddy was a sweet kid who didn't deserve to have her feelings hurt by rejection.

"Visions usually come true a few days after the first dream," Sam said without thinking. "We should have a week at the most to wait it out."

It wasn't until he noticed the surprised looks he was receiving from Sabine and her elder daughters that Sam realized he'd just more or less confessed the very thing he preferred to keep secret. He was about to come up with some bullshit story about having studied the workings of prophetic dreams, but Maddy spoke up first.

"Sam's like me, Mama!" she said happily. She fixed him with her big blue eyes, smiling widely and just generally being too damn cute to get mad at – which wasn't to say that Sam didn't _try_ to get mad at her, because he did. However, failing that, he let out a defeated sigh, and went back to stroking Maddy's head.

"No wonder she likes you so much," Katie said, turning her attention right back to her card game. "Maddy's never met another seer before."

"I thought things like that ran in families," Dean said.

"They _do_ run in families," Bryce replied. "But when you come from a bloodline with lots of different abilities, not everybody ends up getting the same one."

"We can all communicate with spirits and sense energies," Katie chimed in, "but each of us has a different thing that we do best."

"I'm a dream-walker," Bryce stated proudly, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Sabine smiled at the two men who, from the looks on their faces, were just now getting a taste of what David put up with every day of his life. She only hoped they managed to handle it with David's patience and grace.

* * *

"No. No freakin' way you've got a royal flush."

"I have so."

"Show me your cards," Dean demanded irritably, stifling a curse when Bryce proved her claim with an infuriating smirk.This was not happening. Dean Winchester was _not_ playing poker with a ten-year-old, and he was_ definitely _not getting his ass handed to him by said ten-year-old.

"You're cheating," he accused. "You've been doing some freaky little mind-reading thing."

"_You've_ been stacking the deck for the past hour!" Bryce shot back indignantly, launching a poker chip at his nose. The fact that he _always_ stacked the deck for a game of poker was now, in Dean's opinion, a moot point.

"Have not!"

A second poker chip, aimed at Bryce's forehead.

"Have too!"

A third chip took flight, nailing Dean in the chin.

"Have not!"

"Kids, play nice," Sam said, the large book in his hand serving both as a shield against stray projectiles and as camouflage for the amused grin on his face. Sam wasn't the only one who'd found a kindred spirit among Sabine's daughters, although he was pretty damn sure Dean would never admit to having anything in common with the fiery fifth-grader he was currently engaging in battle.

It was interesting to watch Dean with kids; it always further supported Sam's theory that his brother was still mentally just a horny fifteen-year-old. Sam recalled the way Dean had blatantly propositioned their waitress the day before.

A _really_ horny fifteen-year-old, he corrected himself.

* * *

David Harvey wasn't sure exactly what he'd been expecting when Sabine had thrown out the words "monster hunter", but he _was_ sure that neither Sam nor Dean Winchester was anywhere near the image that term had brought to mind.

They were just boys, for one thing, and rather too clean and pretty-looking for another. Admittedly, David had read Dracula a few too many times and was picturing someone a bit more of the Abraham Van Helsing persuasion; old and wizened, rather than young and handsome. Not that he resented them for it – after all, they were ten years too old to look twice at his daughters, and he had no doubts about his wife's loyalty – he just found it odd that two young men with such promise would choose to go around chasing spooks rather than getting an education and settling down with the right woman.

But then, perhaps David placed too much value upon living the quiet life.

"I must confess, gentlemen, that I find this… _werewolf_ business somewhat ridiculous," he said that night once the three of them were alone in the kitchen, Sabine having ushered the girls upstairs to bed. Kate had been particularly reluctant to leave the room, and David found himself thanking God that the girl was just barely thirteen – if she'd been any older, he would have had much more cause for concern, seeing the way she looked at Dean. Still… warning the boy to lock his door might not be entirely out of the question.

David immediately reprimanded himself for even thinking such a thing.

"Then, with all due respect, Sir, why are you letting us stay here?" Sam asked.

"Because… my wife truly believes there's something out there," David replied with a sigh, refilling his glass of bourbon before passing the bottle to Dean. "And if she's so sure about something, there must be at least a kernel of truth to it. And if, God forbid, there _were_ to be some lupine attack on our house, the nearest decent motel is about a half-hour away, and you boys would never be able to make it here in time."

David carefully omitted the fact that the poor kids looked as though they could use a few good meals and a nice place to sleep.

"Man, you've got a lot of faith in your wife," Dean commented, wearing an odd, half-hearted grin as the click of heels on the wood floor heralded Sabine's return.

"She's never given me reason not to."

"Honestly, he makes it sound like I'm some sort of saint." Sabine gave her husband a kiss on the cheek, and joined the men at the table. She smirked at the elder Winchester brother. "By the way, Dean, I'm not allowed to tell you that my firstborn thinks you're hot."

"Well, she's a little young for me right now," he replied, his grin no longer merely half-hearted. "But, hey, I'll probably still be single in ten years or so, unless something eats me."

* * *

(A/N- Review, pleeeease! It gives me a reason to _live_! …Or, at least, to keep writing. Smooches, my lovelies!

HealerAriel's favorite Dean quote of the moment: (yelling to the Wendigo) "Want some white meat, bitch?")


	5. What Never Could Be

(A/N- OMG, I feel the love. Y'all make it all worthwhile, and for that, you all get… M&M's!

My younger brother brought up an interesting point the other day, while I was in the process of making him watch my taped episodes of Supernatural. Quoth Mark, "Imagine how much Dean would be able to curse if this was a _late night_ show!" Yeah, I have the feeling we would be hearing much more obscene words dropping from those lovely, pillowy lips. Funny how he can make it… y'know, _funny,_ rather than offensive. Okay, I'm finished with the thought of the day.)

* * *

"This doesn't feel right," Sam said, as he and Dean headed upstairs to their respective guest rooms. "Staying in their house, I mean. It feels like we're… I don't know, _conning_ them, or something."

"Hey, you heard David; it takes thirty minutes to get here from town. Besides, how often do we get room and board in this line of work?"

"Well… never."

"And do we ever _ask_ for charity?"

"No."

"Then why should we be ashamed to accept it when it's offered freely?" Dean grinned. "And don't even _try_ to tell me Sabine's cooking isn't the second best thing to having sex, 'cause you know it is. I swear, when that cornbread hit my tongue, I had to keep myself from –"

"_Dean_!"

"– Moaning. What? What did you think I was gonna say?"

"…You're a jerk," Sam muttered, blushing furiously.

"Come on, Sammy," Dean cooed, overjoyed at the chance to embarrass his little brother, "what did you think I was gonna say?"

"I hate you, and I'm going to bed," Sam informed, ducking into his room and shutting the door. He heard Dean chuckling on the other side.

"You prude," he said. Sam was tempted to fling open the door and insist that he was_ not_ a prude; that he and Jess had, in fact, made beautiful love every night; that Dean could never appreciate such a thing because he was incapable of seeing women as something other than receptacles for his own sick, twisted, kinky pleasures…

But thinking about Jessica made him sad – and thinking about what Dean did with women made him cringe with horror – so Sam said nothing, which was probably to his benefit in the long run, because getting Dean started on a conversation about their respective sex lives would undoubtedly end with Dean's recitation of his tryst with that girl in Georgia who had a thing for handcuffs and chocolate syrup.

Sam shuddered violently. _That_ was one he never wanted to hear again. Granted, it wasn't quite as disturbing as the story about the girl in Minnesota with the fetish for frigid mountain streams… but it was a close second. Sam dearly wished his brother could just gloat _silently_ about having had sex in every state in the union.

* * *

_"Honestly, Sam, are you going to sleep all day?" The familiar voice startled him, and his eyes snapped open._

_"Jess?" he breathed, not quite believing what he was seeing. But there she was: alive, healthy, and looking like she was trying not to break into giggles at the confusion on his face as she pulled open the lacy curtains at the window._

_"What?"_

_"You're…but you… you're_ dead_."_

_"You just had a bad dream," she said, sitting down next to him on the bed. "I'm fine, Sam. See?" She held up both hands, as if proving herself corporeal. The sunlight glinted off her wedding ring. Sam glanced down at the matching ring on his left hand. They were married? But Jessica had died before he'd even had the chance to…_

_"Daddy!" _

_A three-, maybe four-year-old girl appeared at Jessica's side. She cocked her head._

"_Are you okay, Daddy?" Jessica ran her hand over the child's dark hair._

"_Daddy had a bad dream, Julia," she said, and Sam's heart nearly broke. Jess had always loved the name 'Julia'._

_Julia – beautiful, angel-faced Julia – climbed into Sam's lap, and he hugged her tightly, burying his face in her soft hair._

_So this was it? This is what he might have, could have,_ should_ have had? This was his life without ghosts and demons and monsters? Or was there still evil to fight, and he had just warned Jessica this time; kept her safe?_

_He pulled Jessica to him, not really caring how bizarre she and Julia thought he was acting. _

_God, they felt so solid and real in his arms. He never wanted to let them go, never wanted to wake up if this was what could be his in his sleep._

_But slowly, surely, Jessica and the daughter she would never have began to fade into nothing._

And as he lay in the Harveys' guest room with the morning sun streaming in through wooden blinds, Sam Winchester didn't know whether to smile or cry.

* * *

(A/N- Words of wisdom: hearing Elvis's "Burning Love" on the radio should not make one think of Jessica. And if it _does_, the irony is cruel, not funny, and one should not start to giggle, for Sam would be sad, and shoot the giggler. Thus, HealerAriel should be dead now.

Sorry, short chapter. I just… needed this.)


	6. Token Chick Flick Moment

(A/N- We'll be going straight to the thought of the day, _mes chèris_, and it is as follows:

I live in Maryland. We have an _Ellicott_ _City_ in Maryland. Is it weird that I can no longer see that name without snapping back into the mindset of one watching "Asylum"? I think it may be…

Oh. And I apologize for the "Hidalgo" reference in this chapter. Anyone who spots it can have a cameo if they give me a name and a physical description to be used. Hey – same deal if anybody spots the Good Omens reference in chapter two. This could be a fun game, don't you think? Yesssss, my preciousssss…)

* * *

Dean Winchester was not, strictly speaking, what anyone could call a "morning person."

However, he quickly discovered that even he could _become_ a morning person after a few cups of coffee strong enough to stand a horseshoe up in, and it was in this uncommonly bright and cheerful mood that he went to fetch his sibling for breakfast.

His original intent was to creep up stealthily on sweet, unassuming, sleeping Sammy and wake him up via pouncing. Unfortunately for Dean – but fortunately for Sam because Dean, being a muscular guy, was very heavy – the door turned out to be locked, and he was forced to resort to a slightly more subtle method.

_Slightly_ being the operative word.

"Sammy!" he bellowed, pounding on the door. "Rise and shine!"

"Hold on," came the muffled, irritated reply. "I need to get dressed."

"Yeah, well, light a fire under it, Sleeping Beauty. There's a couple huge plates of biscuits and gravy downstairs with our names on 'em." He contemplated throwing in that the food looked _orgasmic_, but he figured he'd embarrassed Sammy enough last night, so any comments of a crude and sexual nature would have to wait at least a few more hours. Corrupting the innocent was a slow and tedious process, but someone had to do it.

It was a few minutes before the door was opened.

"Dude, you look like hell," Dean said, concern hitting him like a ton of bricks at the sight of his little brother's eyes. Either Sam had some reefer he wasn't sharing, or… "Have you been crying?"

"Nah, it's nothing," Sam answered a little too quickly, giving his eyes one last swipe with the back of his hand and looking ashamed of himself.

_Aww, shit, he _has_ been crying_, Dean thought, almost cringing with the knowledge that this could only be fixed with a talk about feelings. _This'd be so much easier if I was a chick…_

"You need to talk about it?" he forced himself to say, his voice sounding rougher than he'd meant it to. Still, Sammy looked relieved to have been given the go-ahead.

"It was just… I had a dream about Jess."

"You've never woken up from a nightmare looking like this before," Dean stated helpfully. Sam shook his head.

"It wasn't a nightmare. I don't know what it was, exactly. She was _alive_, Dean," he said, with that familiar look in his eyes that begged his big brother to have all the answers. "She was alive, and happy; we were married. We had this… this beautiful little girl, and – " Sam's voice broke, and he looked away, fresh tears glistening in his eyes.

Sammy looked so heartbroken that Dean almost wanted to hug the poor kid, but he couldn't actually bring himself to do it.

"Just sounds like wishful thinking to me, buddy," he said as gently as he could manage. He had a feeling that Sam's exposure to Sabine, David, and their kids wasn't really helping his emotional state, but he didn't want to say it. He couldn't condemn the Harvey family just because they happened to love each other.

"I just can't help wondering, you know? I mean, what if I'd _told_ Jess about my nightmares? God, Dean, what if that dream was what _should_ have happened? Maybe I didn't do what I was supposed to, and because of me Jess died and Julia will never even be born."

_No_, Dean willed frantically as Sam's voice cracked again._ No crying. I don't know how to handle crying. Get mad, I'm good with that!_

"Hey, you didn't know," he assured. "And you can't change it now. You shouldn't worry about Julia, either," he added, knowing full well that the loss of a child – even just a potential one – was what had hit Sam the hardest. Hell, he was honestly a little choked up about maybe not getting a shot at being Uncle Dean. "If she's meant to be born, she'll be born. Eventually."

Though still sad, Sam looked a little more at ease. Dean grasped his brother's shoulder; squeezed; let go. _That's as close to a hug as you're ever getting, pal, unless one of us is at death's door._

"Now come on. Breakfast is getting cold."

* * *

(A/N- short transition chapter, but it needed to happen. Next chapter: Sam, Dean, and Sabine traipse through the woods after breakfast to see if they can find the werewolves' lair. Shall they? Hell, I don't even know yet…

Something fun to do (well, maybe not fun, but apropos): get all into a _Supernatural _mood, listen to "Your Winter" by Sister Hazel, and tell me what it makes you think of. It will probably make you cry, or at least sigh heavily with emotion. _Ciao_, my loves!)


	7. Lair

(A/N- The hot weather in Oakvale is directly influenced by the fact that HealerAriel is currently freezing her ass off. Forgive me if you live in a hot place and are just suffering more due to this chapter... Just imagine the Winchester boys with their shirts off, if it helps )

* * *

Sabine Harvey was the only woman alive on whom the combination of cowboy boots, a rifle, perfectly coiffed hair and a French manicure didn't look at all odd.

She was also in surprisingly good shape, which was a cause of some discouragement for the Winchester brothers as they followed her through the dense woods. Huffing and puffing in the sweltering Mississippi heat, led by a thirty-three-year-old housewife who hadn't even broken a sweat… well, it wasn't something they were going to be bragging about. Not that they were going to admit to any discomfort, unless it was a hundred degrees in the shade.

"You boys alright?" she asked, looking back at them with a concerned, motherly expression on her face. They both nodded vehemently, forcing themselves to curb their panting. It was only _ninety-three_ degrees in the shade, after all. They could hold out a little longer before dying of heat stroke.

They'd set off right after breakfast to look for the werewolves' lair, figuring that if they could sneak up on the pack while most of its members were sleeping, it was just a matter of pumping them full of silver and torching the carcasses – no tracking or chasing required.

"So," Dean said, "thirteen years of marriage, huh?" Normally he would have balked at the idea of conversation for conversation's sake, but as it were he was clinging to the desperate hope that running his mouth could distract him from the feeling of being suffocated by a hot, wet towel. From the look Sabine gave him, he guessed that she'd picked up on that, but was perfectly happy to talk nonetheless.

"I got married about a week after we cleared out the werewolves," she answered, nodding. Dean's eyebrows shot upward.

"You work fast," he commented. Sabine rolled her eyes.

"Oh, for God's sake! I didn't just arbitrarily decide to get married when the pack was gone. The whole reason I called you and John in was because I thought it might be a _little_ much for David to move into a house under siege by werewolves."

"So you were _engaged_ when we met. And here I spent all these years just thinking you were immune to my charms."

"Well, there was that," she agreed with a smirk. "But the really _big_ issue was that you were still shooting blanks when I met you."

"What're you talking about, my gun was loaded with silv–" He paused. Sabine was glancing at him with a raised eyebrow, and Sam looked like he was fighting off an onslaught of giggles. And it occurred to Dean that perhaps it hadn't been his _gun_ that Sabine was referring to. "Oh, so not cool," he grumbled, his cheeks heating in embarrassment – both for the jab itself, and for the fact that Sam had picked up on a bawdy joke before he had. Way to add insult to injury.

* * *

Aside from Dean alternately humming "Bad Moon Rising" and "Werewolves of London" under his breath, the next hour was spent in relative silence. It was only a little while till sunset, and finding the lair was beginning to look like a lost cause. In fact, the trio was seriously considering calling it a day, until Sam tripped over something warm and furry.

That something, upon inspection, turned out to be a buck – or what was left of one, anyway. With so much flesh and muscle and bone ripped away, the only really distinguishing feature left was the rack of horns laying a few feet away from the creature's cracked, skin-stripped skull. Sam's stomach churned, and he scrambled to put distance between himself and the dead animal.

"Looks like the work of a werewolf." Dean sounded far too pleased with this discovery, actually crouching down for a closer look at the kill while Sam was busy vowing that he would never eat venison again. "Still warm, too."

"Then the werewolf that killed it shouldn't be far off," Sabine added with a victorious smile.

_What's wrong with these people?_ Sam wondered, nevertheless falling in behind his brother and Sabine, who had begun following a faint blood trail on the ground. The trail ended at a mass of bushes, which Dean pushed aside to reveal the opening to a small cave. He grinned, and motioned for them to follow him inside.

The passage was only wide enough for them to walk single-file and was low enough in some areas that Sam had to duck – something he'd found out after cracking his head on the ceiling one too many times, and being angrily shushed for his hisses of pain. Covered in dead animal germs and developing a migraine and a not-so-minor case of claustrophobia, Sam decided that he seriously deserved some chocolate for his troubles. Maybe he could convince Sabine to bake some brownies later: pout a little; flash the big, brown puppy-dog eyes. That routine had usually worked to weasel some goodies out of Jess, and if that hadn't done the trick... well, there _had_ been a more fun method of paying for his snacks, but that had been exclusively for Jess. The puppy-dog eyes were just gonna to have to do this time.

It wasn't until he walked into Sabine – who then bumped into Dean – that Sam realized his brother had stopped walking. Up ahead of them the passage widened into a small, round room.

And the ground was covered with at least twenty sleeping werewolves.

"Jackpot," Dean whispered, readying his gun. Sam and Sabine mirrored the motion and, stepping quietly, the three of them spread out around the room, their backs to the walls. If they fired quickly enough, they could thin out the pack to a reasonable number before the creatures were lucid enough to fight back. Some things you feel bad about killing in cold blood. Werewolves, however, have never been among them.

"One," Dean mouthed, taking aim at the monster closest to him. "Two." Sabine pointed her rifle between the eyes of the huge grey lump at her feet; Sam fixed his gun on the bloody-muzzled (_I bet you just killed something cute and furry, didn't you?_ he accused silently) werewolf to his left.

"Three."

The gunfire was almost deafening, echoing back even louder in the enclosed area. With three werewolves dead, the humans aimed and fired again and again, four more rounds in sixty seconds, as the rest of the pack began to wake and realize what was happening.

And, understandably, they were a little pissed off.

A large black monster hurled itself full-tilt at Sam, who dodged and shot it in the back of the head; another leapt at Dean from the side, raking its claws across his arm before he put a bullet into it; two more went straight for Sabine – she felled one, and Dean shot the other; another took a flying leap, caught Sam in the chest with its massive paws and knocked him to the ground, opening its jaws to snap his face off – it wasn't certain who killed that one, because all three guns fired at once, leaving a dead werewolf to collapse on Sam.

It had taken all of a minute and thirty seconds.

There was a collective sigh of relief, and then Sam intimated that he'd really, really like some help getting the enormous corpse off of him if it wasn't too much trouble.

* * *

Once the carcasses had been piled up, liberally soaked with lighter fluid, and set ablaze inside their cave, the hunters took stock of injuries. Sam was going to have some bruises from the pouncing, and Dean had blood running down his arm from the scratches, but aside from that they were unharmed.

"That was almost too easy," Dean said, examining what promised to become some very impressive scars. "I was kind of hoping there'd be more of them…"

"Next time we'll wake them up for you first," Sabine promised. "Sam and I can sit back and watch while you play gladiator. Remind me to clean your arm when we get back to the house," she added. "If that gets infected it's not going to be pretty."

"Yes, mother," he replied with a dramatic roll of his eyes. Then he grinned "Hey, you know, I think me and Sam deserve some hero cookies for this; I mean, we _were_ injured in the line of duty." Sabine laughed.

"What kind of hero cookies are we talking?"

"Anything with chocolate," Sam said immediately, a smile spreading across his face. "_Chocolate_ hero cookies."

"Sam's like a PMSing chick when it comes to chocolate," Dean explained, nudging his brother with his non-bloody arm.

Sabine agreed that some chocolate hero cookies would be doable, and the trio headed out of the woods for some much-needed air conditioning, so preoccupied with talking and laughing that they didn't pay any attention to the faint rustling in the bushes, or the sets of glittering green eyes in the shadows that tracked their every move.

* * *

(A/N- Heeheehee. Review, please, my darlings, for this _is_ a possible stopping point…) 


	8. Chocolate and Silver

(A/N- Okay, okay, I can't stop it there. Y'all convinced me not to be evil and leave you hanging with the eyes.

And now, for something completely different: In a spooky way, my younger brother and I act kind of like Sam and Dean… y'know, if I were male and we weren't total chickens… We'd be the ones outside "guarding the car" while they were doing the suicidal hero stuff.

**Random snippet of amusing conversation:**

Me: I've noticed that whenever I start talking about _Supernatural_, you change the subject.

Mark (my brother): Hey, look, is that smoke?_ (pantomimes trying to light the sole of his shoe on fire)_

**I made chocolate mousse from scratch today. Be proud of me!**)

* * *

"–And then the demon pulled the plane into a nosedive, and everyone started freaking out." 

"Even you?"

"Even me," Dean admitted, enjoying the wide-eyed disbelief on Kate's face. "Not Sam, though; he didn't miss a beat. He finished the exorcism and sent the demon back to hell."

"You're so brave, Sam!" Maddy said with an adoring smile that induced a warm, fuzzy feeling in the young hunter whose lap she was once again occupying.

They weren't sure how it had happened, but one way or another Sam and Dean had been roped into reciting their adventures to the Harvey girls, who listened to each tale with rapt attention. Dean, in particular, had proved himself surprisingly good at telling only slightly embellished accounts of their heroics, and Sam was more than happy to just fill in an important detail here and there to make the stories flow a bit smoother; when Dean got really into something, all he wanted to focus on was the ass-kicking.

No doubt about it: the Brothers Grimm had nothing on the Winchesters.

"Tell us another one!" Bryce commanded, bouncing excitedly and looking at Dean with newfound respect – which wasn't to say that she intended to go any easier on him in their next round of five-card stud.

"You girls aren't bothering Sam and Dean, are you?" Sabine asked, entering the room with a big batch of delicious-smelling "hero cookies" and setting them on the coffee table. Sam's mouth began to water; he really _was _like a premenstrual female when there was chocolate involved.

"No, Mama," the girls chorused.

Sam grabbed a cookie, took a bite, and nearly whimpered with chocoholic bliss. If the rest of Sabine's cooking was the second best thing to sex, her chocolate cookies were at least equivalent to it. Given the choice between sex and chocolate… Well, it would probably have to be sex, since simultaneously they would throw him into a pleasure overdose and he'd die, but one right after the other would be ideal.

Mmm… Post-coital chocolate mousse…

"Tell Mama how you kicked the Wendigo's ass, Dean!"

"Bryce, watch your language."

"Yes, Mama," the ten-year-old replied with the most innocent look she could muster. The little exchange made Dean remember the first time he'd said "fuck" in his father's presence and not been yelled at for it. That was such a happy memory. Of course, John had started yelling at him again when it became apparent that Dean was trying to work the oath into at least fifty phrases per day, but for a while there life was _fucking_ beautiful.

* * *

After the cookies had been devoured and the Winchesters agreed that they'd probably gained ten pounds each just since arriving in Oakvale, the next mission was to stock up on silver bullets because they were running low. Luckily the locals were a superstitious bunch, descended from Druids and Gypsies respectively, and the small town down the road from the McLeod-Harvey estate featured a shop that actually sold such supplies as holy water, wooden stakes, silver bullets, and Voodoo paraphernalia. 

Sam and Dean found themselves spending quite some time in said shop. In Sam's case, this was to make sure they had plenty of supplies if ever they should need them. In Dean's case, it was mostly to flirt with – and see if there was any possibility of getting into the pants of – the cute brunette behind the counter whose nametag proclaimed her "Cassandra;" a pursuit abruptly, albeit reluctantly ended when she let slip that she wasn't _quite_ eighteen yet.

Dean Winchester may not have been a completely law-abiding fellow, but this was a small town, and he wasn't too keen on the idea of Cassandra's daddy coming after him with a loaded shotgun for corrupting his underage daughter. He'd been through that song and dance _way_ too many times – not with underage girls, per se, but just small-town girls in general.

The smaller the town, the bigger the angry daddy's gun; it was a law of nature.

"It's a damn shame," he sighed as he and Sam returned to the car.

"What, that you won't get laid tonight? You're just… you're… there are no words for what you are, Dean."

Dean disagreed wholeheartedly with this. He could think of several good adjectives to apply to himself: handsome, witty, charming, and awesome in bed to name a few. But enlightening his baby brother to that fact would probably just win him a petulant eye-roll and a long-suffering sigh, so he felt no need to correct Sammy's rather grievous error.

* * *

Sam made a point of lingering on the front porch for a few minutes after he and Dean returned to the house. The air was warm and peaceful, filled with cricket-song and the sound of the nearby creek. 

But regardless of the idyllic scene, he couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right. It was just a feeling; just a prickling feeling at the back of his neck as though someone or something was watching him.

A second before going inside, he thought he caught some movement out of the corner of his eye and he turned sharply to see what was there. He stared at the bushes for a good thirty seconds. Nothing happened.

"Probably a raccoon," he murmured to himself.

But he made sure the front door was locked and dead-bolted anyway. Just in case.

* * *

(A/N- Oooh, I'm starting to have some fun with this! Sorry about Sam's sex-and-chocolate spiel, I couldn't resist…) 


	9. The Wolf Is At The Door

(A/N- Woohoo, Politically-Correct-And-Totally-Unaffiliated-With-Any-Religion Winter Break! dances

**Snippet o' conversation:**

(Taking place during the last, like, seven minutes of the Bloody Mary episode)

Mark: (referring to the horrible, obligatory helper-girl character) Hah! It's too late now! She's killed herself already!

Me: Nah. She's in the backseat of the car… read into that what you will.

Mom: (_rolls eyes_)

Mark: (_sniggers_ _and mimics Obnoxious Extraneous Character's mid-coitus shouts of approval to Dean and Sam_)

**By the way, it takes a very secure – and perverted – man to smile coyly and ask if he looks like Paris Hilton when there's night vision on. My respect for Dean went up several points, and my mom didn't understand why I was giggling… I'm in no hurry to explain it to her.**

**And for a little rant, what is _with_ all the skinny, bleach-blonde, stock-hottie female characters? When are we gonna see a plump and/or bespectacled brunette or redhead, or a black or Asian or Indian girl for that matter? Come on, let's expand our horizons here, people, everyone in America is _not_ perfectly Anglo-Saxon…**

…**Yes I realize Sabine is blonde, but she's also happily married and not afraid to bleed (and written with the ashy, _natural_ blonde color in mind – just trust me), which negates the _Supernatural_ Stock-Hottie factor.)**

* * *

When someone's offering you free food and lodging, it's only polite to repay them by restocking their silver bullet supply. With that in mind, Sam and Dean had bought extra ammo at the occult shop and presented it to Sabine, who gave them the key to her armory and simple instructions as to where to put the bullets – a task that should have taken only a few seconds, and probably _would_ have had Sam been the one in charge of it.

But as it were, this was not the case.

"This woman is a goddess," Dean said, with the wide-eyed awe of a five-year-old child who has just entered Toys R Us for the very first time with instructions to go ahead and pick out anything and everything he wants.

The armory was nearly the size of the guest bedrooms, and was filled with all that a weapons-junkie could ever dream of. Three walls were hung with guns and swords of every shape and size – Uzis, shotguns, machetes, rifles, broadswords, scimitars; even an AK-47. The fourth wall held Sabine's bow collection, with a large crossbow occupying the place of honor. And if Dean wasn't mistaken, there was also…

"Oh, baby, come to Daddy," he breathed reverently, picking up the flamethrower and cradling it to his chest like an infant, cooing lovingly to it.

"You worry me sometimes," Sam informed, locating the drawer labeled "silver bullets" and dropping the pouch of ammo inside while his older brother continued to nuzzle his cheek against the flamethrower.

"Aw, c'mon, Sammy, you know how long I've wanted one of these!" Dean whined, gazing covetously at the weapon. "Dad would never let me have a flamethrower."

"Because you've been showing all the warning signs of pyromania since the tender age of three, Dean."

Dean smirked. "You still haven't gotten over me setting your teddy bear on fire, have you?"

"I _loved_ that teddy bear."

"We were doing Hawaiian culture in my social studies class, dude; he was a sacrifice to Pele."

"The hell he was, you pyro."

"What's taking you boys so long, the spaghetti's almost–? Oh, Dean, I should have known better than to let you see that thing..."

Dean grinned sheepishly, but continued to pet the flamethrower. Sabine shook her head and sighed.

Sam opened his mouth to say something nice and snarky about Dean's tendency to be more attracted to pyrotechnics than to women, but his train of thought was interrupted by a loud thud, and Maddy screaming at the top of her lungs.

"There's one outside! It's trying to get through the door!"

Sabine had snatched up a shotgun and was out of the room before Sam could even register the significance of Maddy's words, but it hit him a split-second later.

His gut instincts had been right; they'd celebrated too soon.

"You just _had_ to wish for more of them, didn't you, Dean?"

* * *

"What in God's name is going on?" David demanded.

"Slight miscalculation of Oakvale's werewolf population," Sam replied, as he and Dean followed Sabine to the back door, the creature on the other side of which was letting out snarls that would put Hollywood to shame. David paled considerably, as people usually do when it is proven to them that yes, monsters _do_ exist, and that thing under your bed when you were seven probably _did_ want to eat you.

It was a stark contrast to the manic glee on Dean's face as he examined the flamethrower in his hands.

"Man, I was hoping I'd get to try this thing out! C'mon, Sammy, let's go fry a werewolf."

Sabine gave him what could only be described as the "Mom" look.

"Boy, if you break my flamethrower…"

Sam bent down to the five-year-old child staring at the door with horror. "Maddy, you stay back with your father," he said, giving her a gentle push toward David, and whipping around just in time to see the door splinter, break, and fall apart, admitting a very large and annoyed-looking werewolf.

Sam and Sabine had to pump a few rounds into the monster before it finally fell, dead.

"My God," David breathed, staring at the corpse as though if he tried hard enough not to believe it was there, it would somehow disappear. By that time Kate and Bryce had heard all the noise, and had come running to see what was going on, and were more than a little disturbed by the bloody lycan carcass on the linoleum.

"Oh, hell," said Bryce.

More snarls sounded outside. Sam cursed under his breath. Dean flashed a half-crazed grin and darted outside to try out his new toy. Howls, sizzles, and whoops of joyful pyromania commenced outside. Sam peeked out the door, and learned with revulsion that when flames were taken to a werewolf, said werewolf met the same fate as an overcooked hotdog.

It didn't take the werewolves long to realize that they weren't faring too well out in the open against a lunatic with a flamethrower, and the un-ignited creatures took flight into the woods.

"Dude, I _love_ this thing!" Dean crowed, coming back into the house looking ecstatic, though slightly more singed than normal. "The rest of 'em ran off, we gotta go after 'em."

"David, keep the girls inside," Sabine said, pushing her daughters toward her husband.

"Mama, let us fight, too," Bryce insisted. "You said yourself we're better shots than most of the men in town!" Sabine shook her head.

"You're too young."

"I'm thirteen, Mama!" Kate said stubbornly. "Same age Dean was last time; he told me so!"

Dean cringed under the glare Sabine shot him. "Sorry," he mouthed. Of all the things to come back and bite you in the ass…

"Kathleen Ann Harvey, you will stay in this house whether you like it or not."

"But _Dean's_ father let him–"

"_I_ am nothis father!" Sabine snapped, the uncharacteristic harshness in her voice making everyone in the room flinch. "John Winchester's decision to sacrifice his own children for the so-called greater good is his own damned business, but you are _my_ child – _not_ his – and you will _stay in this house_. Is that perfectly clear?"

_Way to drive the proverbial dagger into a guy's heart_, Dean thought wryly, now officially feeling like shit.

Sabine and her eldest daughter stared each other down for a good three seconds.

"Yes, ma'am," Kate muttered at last.

"Thank you." Then Sabine addressed the rest of her family. "I want you all to barricade yourselves in an upstairs room – Kate, you and Bryce may snipe from a window if you simply cannot control yourselves."

She turned to the Winchesters.

"And _we_ are going to hunt down and kill everything evil in these woods."

* * *

(A/N- Sorry, loves… left you hanging again. Oh, and… actually, a werewolf bite may not be entirely out of the question… But you'll have to see.) 


	10. Claws and Teeth

(A/N- Merry Christmas to all! Yes, I realize everyone reading this may not celebrate Christmas… Happy Festivus Maximus, then! This be my present to you! Smooches!

This is kind of an ironic Christmas chapter (well, fine, by the time I finish, it'll be in the wee hours of the morning _after_ Christmas) considering all the ouchies in it, but whatevs…)

* * *

A quiet and sullen Dean was never a good sign, even less so on a hunt when he was usually at least subtly giddy at the thought of killing something. Sam groaned inwardly. It was obvious that Sabine's criticism of John Winchester's parenting skills had cut pretty deep, but he knew his stubborn jackass of a brother would never actually _admit_ it. Dean scarcely acknowledged that he had any emotions at all; suggesting that he'd had his feelings hurt was likely to get you shot.

So, Sam was understandably concerned for Sabine's well-being when she put her hand on his brother's shoulder.

"Dean. Look, what I said about John–"

"It's fine," he grumbled, shrugging her hand off. Still, Sabine looked like she wasn't ready to give up, and while Sam admired her perseverance, he couldn't help thinking that pushing the issue was a really stupid move when the bottled-up emotions were primed and ready to erupt.

"No, it's not. You don't understand –"

"What's not to understand? You think my dad's a lousy father, that came off pretty damn clear, Sabine," Dean spat. Sabine opened her mouth to make a rebuttal, but Dean was now both hurt and pissed off which, in Sam's experience, made it _really_ hard for him to shut up. "You think he _'sacrificed'_ us, that we were nothing to him but extra goddamn firepower?"

Sam wondered idly if maybe he should gently confiscate the pistol Dean was waving around for emphasis, just in case his enthusiasm overrode his common sense and he started firing at everything and wasting ammo.

"I never –"

"And you know what?" Dean snarled at Sabine, looking, at the moment, far more dangerous than the creatures they were hunting. "Maybe we _didn't_ have much of a childhood, and maybe Dad never _was_ father of the fucking year, but if you think for one second that he didn't love us then to hell with you!"

"Dean –"

"Don't touch me, Sam," he hissed, slapping his brother's hand away before it made contact. "I just wanna go shoot something, okay? Stop it with the coddling shit." Dean stalked off into the shadows, cursing to himself all the way.

"Nice to feel loved," Sam remarked. Sabine let out a sigh.

"Does he always take apologies this well?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Anger was kind of the only emotional response we were allowed to have growing up, so Dean has a hard time expressing anything else."

"I didn't mean to hurt his feelings, Sam, you know I didn't. I just wasn't thinking straight." She sighed again. "I never should have said that about your Daddy."

Sam's laugh was entirely void of any humor.

"It wouldn't have hit him so hard if there wasn't some truth to it."

"Aw, _shit_!" The outburst was followed by a cacophony of gunshots. Cocking their weapons, Sabine and Sam broke into a flat-out sprint to catch up with Dean.

They found him in a clearing, shooting like a madman at the dozen or so werewolves that had ambushed and surrounded him.

"You chose _right now_ to be an environmentalist, Dean?" Sam yelled, felling one of the monsters. "The flamethrower was way more effective!"

"Yeah, until I used up all the fuel!"

Another one down.

"You used _all_ the fuel?" Two more shots fired; another dead werewolf. "Dammit, Dean! I just refilled that thing!"

"Come on! You can get more fuel! Oh, you son of a bitch –" he put a bullet into the brain of the werewolf that had almost sunk its teeth into his side. Another leapt at him from behind and dug its claws into his back; he let out a growl of pain, then whipped around and shot the creature, causing the claws to tear their way out of his flesh. "What is it with these things and _scratching the hell outta me_?"

"It could be worse!" Sabine informed, nailing two more werewolves. A third barreled into her, knocking her to the ground. Sam shot it a second before it buried its teeth in her throat.

A howl went up, and the remaining pack members froze for a moment before taking off at full speed into the trees – straight toward the house. The three humans let out a chorus of obscenities, and ran after the beasts.

The scene at the house was not exactly what they had expected.

Werewolves were heading straight for the broken back door, and dropping dead before they got within fifteen feet of it – the work of Kate and Bryce, who indeed proved shockingly adept at hitting moving targets right between the eyes.

"Damn, Sabine, your kids are _cool_!" Dean said, watching three more werewolves crumple to the ground, and picking off a few more.

"This is a small, Southern town; they've been shooting since they were four," she stated, turning her rifle on a giant black monster that had just skulked out of the bushes. She looked around. "Well. That looks like all of –"

She was cut off by a yell of pain and horror.

The last remaining werewolf had snuck up, pounced, and sunken its teeth into Sam's shoulder.

* * *

(A/N- Dum dee dum dee dum… Don't hurt me...) 


	11. Oakvale Medical

(A/N- Eh heh heh… I love you all.

**OMG! I'M GETTING MY CAR PAINTED _LAVENDER_! WHEE!**

**Conversation snippet:**

Me: (in the car on the way home from the mall) I had fun in the beauty supply store, 'cause they have lots of girly stuff!

Mark: Hearing you say that makes me die inside.

**Sorry about the Sammy ouchies… I really _do_ love him… You believe me, right? Right? Anyways, prepare for some kind of unpleasant mental images. Just trust me: I'm cringing right along with you as I type this. Sam really deserves some hugs and cookies after what I'm about to put him through…)**

* * *

"Sam!"four voices screamed in unison as Sam fell to the ground under the creature's weight. The werewolf shook its massive head like a dog with a chew toy, the imbedded fangs ripping through muscle and tendon to scrape bone. Sam cried out in pain as one powerful jerk of the beast's head yanked his arm out of socket.

He saw the steel toe of Dean's boot nail the werewolf in the snout, followed by a yelp and a gunshot, and in an agony- and shock-induced blur he found himself being hoisted to his feet by his good arm while the other hung limply at his side, dripping blood onto the ground. It took his brain a second to register the words coming from Dean and Sabine's mouths: they were asking how bad the damage was, and whether he could move his arm.

No, he couldn't.

"Shoulder's dislocated," he managed between clenched teeth, refusing to shed the tears stinging his eyes. Crying over someone's death was one thing, but crying out of physical pain was something the Winchester men didn't do. Ever.

Dean managed to snap his brother's arm back into socket on the second try; on the first try, his hand had slipped on the blood, and all he'd done was jar poor Sammy's shoulder even more. Each time Sam had only winced, and Dean was proud of him for that, having had his own shoulder relocated enough times to know that it hurt like a bitch.

Hell, he wouldn't have thought any less of Sam if he'd screamed.

By the time Dean had gotten an increasingly woozy Sam into the house, the kitchen table had been cleared off as an operating space.

"'M gonna bleed all over your table," Sam mumbled in protest as he was laid out on top of it.

"Honey, I can buy a new table," Sabine cooed, brushing the hair out of his eyes and placing a rolled-up towel under his head as a cushion. "We can't get a new Sam."

For some reason, that one sentence seemed to clear all the fog from Sam's mind.

"A werewolf bit me," he said, the would-be calm statement laced with undertones of fear.

"Yes, it did," Sabine replied softly, still stroking his head in a comforting, maternal way as Dean cut what was left of Sam's shirt from his wounded shoulder and David filled a large tub with hot water in the sink.

"I'm gonna turn into one."

"Not necessarily." That comment was made even stranger by the fact that it had come from David's mouth, and everyone else turned his or her head to stare at the physics professor in disbelief as he held up a small vial. "I spoke to one of the old Gypsy healers in town yesterday. She said that if a werewolf bite is cleaned out with silver nitrate right away –" he shook the vial for emphasis "– lycanthropy might not set in."

"_You_ willingly spoke to a Gypsy healer?"

"There's a first time for everything, Sabine," he said, emptying the vial of silver nitrate into the hot water tub and soaking some clean cloths with the mixture. "Now I have to warn you, Sam, she said this wouldn't be very comfortable. 'Like holy water on a demon-inflicted wound' were the exact words, if that means something to you."

From the way Sam's face paled, David gathered that such a description certainly _did_ mean something to him.

"Okay, maybe I'd better hold him down," Dean suggested. Sabine nodded her approval, and went to wash her hands.

"I'm not a toddler getting a shot, Dean," Sam growled, half out of annoyance and half out of repressed pain, although he seriously hoped the annoyance was all Dean picked up on. Somehow he doubted it; Dean wasn't as dumb as he acted.

"You'll always be _my_ toddler, Sammy."

"You suck."

"No way, dude. I'm straight."

"Dean, turn him on his side," Sabine instructed, approaching with a steaming, dripping cloth. Dean obliged, pinning Sam to the table as gently as possible in the awkward position.

"Comfy?"

"No."

"Tough luck."

Sabine squeezed out the cloth over the bite, and Sam gritted his teeth as the wound sizzled and smoked, feeling like the flesh was being melted away by acid – but he didn't move. And after a few more cloth-fulls of Sam proving that he could hold perfectly still on his own, Dean stopped holding him down, and instead took up the position Sabine had been in earlier, almost glad that Sammy was in too much pain to care that his big brother was cradling his head and murmuring to him that it was okay; that it would be done soon.

Blood washed away, Dean, David, and Sabine surveyed the damage to Sam's shoulder. Flaps of skin hung loose, and the entire area was already starting to bruise terribly, but it could have been so much worse. The werewolf had managed to yank Sam's arm out of the socket in less than a second – any longer and the arm probably would have been ripped clear off.

"Alright, honey, we're going to have to sew you up," Sabine said gently, putting down the blood-soaked cloth in favor of some sutures. "David's going to give you a tranquilizer, and when you wake up –"

"You'll make me brownies?" Sam asked weakly. Sabine's eyes teared up, and he wasn't sure exactly why.

"Sam, I will make you as many brownies as your little heart desires," she promised with a sniffle.

* * *

The first thing Sam noticed when he regained consciousness was that, from his neck to halfway down his ribcage, everything on the left side of his body ached. He'd been moved into his bed, though, so at least he was comfortable while in pain – if that made any sense at all. The second thing that caught his attention…

"Dean? Can I have my arm back?"

He watched in mild amusement as Dean jolted awake and relinquished the arm he'd been using as a pillow. Sam wondered how long Dean had been there, right beside the bed waiting for him to wake up. The thought warmed his heart, and he held back a smile.

"How long you been awake?" Dean muttered sleepily, raking a hand through his tousled hair.

"Long enough to hope you weren't drooling on my arm."

"Oh, very funny, Sammy," he yawned. "You feeling okay?"

"I feel like I got hit by a truck, actually," Sam admitted. Dean gave him a lopsided smile.

"Werewolves are some nasty sons of bitches, dude. Be glad you're still in one piece. And," he added, reaching over to the nightstand and grabbing a plate which he proceeded to wave under Sam's nose, "be glad that Sabine takes her patients' comfort very seriously."

"Brownies?" Sam nearly swooned at the smell.

"Lots and lots of brownies," Dean confirmed. "I told you. She's a goddess."

Sam happily munched on a brownie, not bothering to remind Dean that just a few hours ago – how long had be been asleep, exactly? – he had been cursing up a storm at Sabine. Fact of the matter was that Dean had likely forgiven Sabine all her trespasses three seconds after his tirade had ended. Dean never _was_ the kind of guy who could hold a grudge; he could only stay mad at someone for any length of time if he constantly reminded himself what they'd done to deserve his wrath.

"Did you know she's a midwife?" Dean continued, eyes glazing over with adoration.

"No." _You're back in safe territory, Sabine: he worships you again._

"Turns out the nearest real hospital is, like, a two hour drive away, so the people in Oakvale have just sorta figured out how to do most of their medical stuff on their own." He grinned. "It's kinda cool for Kate and Bryce and Maddy, you know? I mean, their mom can deliver their babies."

Sam didn't really see why that could be considered "cool", but he was too tired to really care, and he had more important things on his mind. Things like the aching wound on his left shoulder that may or may not have condemned him to grow a fur coat.

"Hey, Dean?" he said, trying to word this as carefully as possible. "Speaking of Oakvale's medical systems and all… we're not really a hundred percent on whether the silver nitrate's gonna work, right?"

"…No."

"And… there's a chance that I'm going to turn into a – a werewolf."

"Yeah… I guess so," Dean said slowly, fixing Sam with a suspicious look. Sam sighed, knowing that Dean wasn't going to like what he was about to say.

"Look, I don't want to be one of those… _things_, and tomorrow night's the full moon, and… Dean, if I start to turn, I want you to kill me."

"_What?_ Fuck no!"

"It's either that, or have me turn into the very thing we hunt."

"So what? You'd only _have_ to turn one night a month, Sam, it's not worth killing you!"

"I wouldn't be the same person, you know that. I mean, come on, Remus Lupin isn't exactly a realistic example of a werewolf."

"Who's –?"

"Never mind," Sam said quickly. He should have known that a Harry Potter reference would be lost on Dean, who avoided literature like the Ebola virus. "The point is, I won't be me anymore. I'll be a monster."

"Sammy –"

"Please, Dean. Promise me that if I start sprouting fur tomorrow night, you'll end it for me." Dean's expression went blank, and for a moment Sam almost thought he could see tears in the older man's eyes. But, that potentially emotional moment passed quickly, replaced by clearly written agitation on Dean's face.

"Fine. You want me to put a silver bullet in your head, I'll do it. But we're waiting until we know for sure that there's no chance of you staying human."

"Thank you."

"Shut up," Dean muttered.

* * *

(A/N- Hmmm, still no Werewolf/Not Werewolf verdict. Wow…) 


	12. Full Moon

(A/N- Happy New Year, y'all! May we toast 2006 with champagne, yummy snacks, and chapter 12!

**Thought of the day:** Y'know… whenever I hear that Nickelback song, "Animals"… It makes me think of the Impala, and all the wicked, immodest things Dean has likely done in it.)

* * *

Dean wasn't behaving as he should have been. He and Sabine had dragged the newly-killed werewolves into a pile for burning – she'd even refueled the flamethrower and let him do the honors – and instead of being exuberant, he was silent and withdrawn.

"You're worried about Sam, aren't you?" she said as they sat nearby, keeping an eye on the blazing bonfire illuminating the gray dawn. Dean said nothing, but rewarded her with a slight nod. Sabine put an arm around his shoulders – an instinct that had developed after years of soothing hurt or frightened children. What the boy really needed was some confirmation of his brother's current species, but failing that a bit of comforting couldn't hurt.

"We've done what we can," she said gently. "We gave him the only known cure. All we can do now is pray for the best."

Again, Dean didn't reply; just let out a deep breath and stared into the flames. Moments later he spoke.

"He wants me to kill him if he starts to turn," he said hollowly.

"Honey, you won't _have_ to –"

"But what if I _do_? What if he starts growing fangs and fur tonight? He made me promise that I would kill him rather than let him live as a monster." His voice had begun to shake and, embarrassed, he took a few breaths and fought back the tears burning his eyes.

_Helluva time to have an emotional breakdown, you freakin' pussy_, he berated himself. _The second Sammy really needs you to be tough about something, you melt into Super Wuss. _

Dean's inner voice was, admittedly, kind of a bastard.

"I wouldn't be able to do it," Sabine said quietly, giving him a little more time to compose himself before speaking again.

"I don't know if _I'll_ be able to do it. It's what Sam wants, and it's the same thing I'd tell him to do if it was me about to turn into a werewolf, but… God, how am I supposed to put a gun to my brother's head and pull the trigger?" He wiped his eyes violently, despising the moisture that threatened to leak out of them at the thought of doing anything to harm Sammy. He decided to take his mind off of it with some good old-fashioned self-deprecation. "Hell, if I'd been doing my damn job right, he wouldn't even have been bitten."

"You couldn't have stopped it."

"I should have been paying attention! I should have had his back, should have seen the thing coming _before_ it attacked him! But I didn't, and look what happened! It's my responsibility to protect him, and I blew it."

"He's not a baby, Dean –"

"He's _my_ baby brother. And whether he likes it or not, he'll still be little Sammy to me when he's ninety! I mean… assuming I don't have to put a bullet in his brain tonight." He choked on the repressed tears, and covered his face with both hands, ashamed of himself.

Well, so much for taking his mind off it…

At a loss for anything reassuring to say, Sabine just hugged his shoulders, softly humming a Gaelic lullaby that had calmed her daughters on countless occasions. Sure enough, after a few refrains of the melody his breathing became more even, the sniffles few and far between. She smiled to herself. She wasn't sure what gave the song its power, but there are some things in life that should just be appreciated and left unquestioned.

"Sam's your whole world, isn't he?"

Dean made a sound halfway between a harsh laugh and a sob.

"You ever say that kinda thing in public, I'll have to kill you."

Sabine took that as a yes.

* * *

The occupants of the McLeod-Harvey household spent the rest of the day as a study in frazzled nerves and anxiety. Sabine cooked nonstop, David was hidden in the living room under a stack of huge books, Kate spent hours in the shooting range, Bryce and Dean played a never-ending game of cheating (for it really didn't deserve to be called poker when they were participating) at the foot of Sam's bed, and Maddy refused to leave his side for any purpose other than to fetch food and drink when it was required.

"I win," Bryce stated for the hundredth time, holding up her cards. Dean grumbled an impressive string of curses under his breath, still really pissed off that anyone could cheat poker better than he could. He only prayed that she never learned to hustle pool.

"Maybe we should try a few rounds without any tricks," he suggested, trying his very hardest to sound sincere. Bryce snorted and rolled her eyes.

"Like I trust _you_. Now ante up before I punch you."

Dean smirked.

"You should've been a boy, Bryce," he said. "You'd be a good boy." He reluctantly pushed her the chips he owed. "See, nobody expects this kinda stuff from a pretty little girl like you." Bryce beamed, indigo eyes gleaming mischievously.

"Deception is half the battle," she replied, shuffling the deck. Dean couldn't stop himself from laughing.

_I want a daughter… Wait, where the hell did _that _come from?_

"Hey guys," Sam said, softly so as not to wake up Maddy, who had long since snuggled up to him and fallen asleep. "The sun's setting."

The quasi-relaxed feeling in the room vanished. Dean could have kicked himself – he hadn't even noticed that the room had been getting darker. How long had Sam held out on telling him?

Sabine, David, and Kate appeared moments later – in his state of panic, Dean hadn't even noticed when Bryce dashed out of the room to get them. His gaze was locked on Sam, who was looking increasingly ill by the second, though his eyes alone betrayed any fear. Oh, this was not good…

* * *

Sam was now very aware of why the Oakvale werewolves had opted to just stay in one form; if the waves of nausea and the splitting headache were what always accompanied a shift, he certainly wouldn't have been too keen on switching back and forth, either. Not that he really had a choice at the moment.

His hazy mind briefly noted that everyone had gathered in the room, but they faded in and out like a wavering mirage, and though he heard them talking, everything they said sounded like he was hearing it underwater. A sudden chill at his side told him that Maddy was no longer there. It made him sad. He would miss little Maddy. It had been nice to hold her in his lap and pretend for just a little while that she was his own child – his Julia – a child he could never have.

Sharp pain shot through his body as his organs shifted – he might have screamed. He didn't know.

Images flashed into his head. Images of chasing, hunting, ripping into living creatures with his teeth and feeling the blood spurt into his mouth. He knew it should have felt glorious. He should have felt powerful; invincible; ravenous. But he felt…

Nothing.

The pain had stopped. His stomach had settled. His head had cleared. He raised what should have been a wickedly-clawed paw, and saw a hand in its stead. He looked up and saw David, Sabine, and Dean looking at him warily. Dean hadn't even pulled out his gun. Bastard never listened to a damn word…

"Hey," Sam mumbled, suddenly exhausted, "is it weird that I have a huge craving for red meat right now?"

* * *

A wave of relief hit Dean, and before he could even think about it he found himself hugging – actually _hugging_ – his little brother. To his credit, the second he realized what he was doing he let go of Sam as though he were poisonous and hung back slightly with a cough of embarrassment, but the damage was done.

Sabine had no such self-consciousness. The woman had burst into tears of joy, and proceeded to hug Sam to the point where Dean thought his eyes might actually pop – and without even touching his wounded shoulder, which just… must have been a woman thing.

"You want red meat, you got it!" she wept. "I must've cooked something along those lines… You know what, if I didn't, it doesn't matter. Whatever you want, sweetheart, I'll make it right away! Can't let you be hungry after all that!" Sabine swept out of the room, all the while reciting to herself a list of the things she'd cooked over the course of the day.

David didn't speak – or maybe didn't trust himself to, if the redness around his eyes was any indication. He clasped Sam's hand, flashed a small smile, and followed his wife from the room. Moments later, a chorus of happy squeals sounded from somewhere below them, and Dean had an oddly vivid mental picture of the Harvey girls jumping up and down in a sort of group hug. Then he snickered a little at the idea of Bryce participating in something so feminine.

Then he locked his eyes on Sam – tired-looking, blessedly_ human_ Sam.

"Well. I didn't have to shoot you," he said past the burning at the back of his throat.

"You didn't even have your gun out, Dean," Sam accused. "What if the transformation hadn't stopped?"

"Then we kinda would've been fucked," Dean replied with a huge grin. "Man, I couldn't have fired on you, are you nuts?"

"You promised you'd do it."

"Sam, you've known me long enough to figure out that almost every promise I make is a big, fat lie. Besides, it might've been kinda cool; you could've been my hunting dog."

And then, metaphorically speaking, the dam broke, and Dean had to turn his face away and pretend to be highly interested in the picture on the far wall.

"…Are you _crying_?"

"_No_!"

"You _are_ crying!"

"Sammy…"

"You really _love_ me!"

"Shut up, Sammy."

"I love you, too, Dean!"

"Shut up!"

"Can I have a hug?"

"_Dammit, Sam_!"

"Oh, come on, just a _little_ one?"

"Don't make me hurt you…"

* * *

(A/N- Are we ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-appy now? One more chapter after this one, I think. Lucky 13, and all that…) 


	13. In The Shade of Avalon

(A/N- Well, first things first, I should thank you all for sticking with me and giving your support. I have more _Supernatural_ fics bubbling around in my brain, so this will certainly not be the last – and as I've said before, I'm very willing to take "commissions", as it were. I love you all, God/Allah/Buddha/Gaia bless you, and enjoy the final chapter of "Mississippi Moon" – the only multichapter fic that I have ever completed.)

* * *

Sam and Dean spent another week in Oakvale, at Sabine's insistence ("Sam Winchester, you will stay in that bed until I tell you otherwise!"). Sam spent the days letting his shoulder heal, Maddy never far from his side; Dean had started teaching the art of pool hustling to his newfound protégée, but only after she swore to never, ever use the knowledge against him. The nights were reserved for telling their stories to the Harvey girls, and having a glass of bourbon with David, who, Dean had to admit – despite the fact that he really,_ really_ wanted to hate him for being lucky enough to marry Sabine – was actually a great guy.

With the werewolves gone for good – Dean and Sabine carefully swept the woods for any remaining creatures – the Winchesters had to admit that Oakvale was one of the most peaceful, calming places they'd ever set foot in; and it was starting to feel more like home than anywhere else, which was why they knew they had to leave as soon as possible, before they became even more attached.

"Mama, why does Sam have to go?" Maddy asked sadly, clinging to her mother's hand as Sam and Dean packed all their belongings into the Impala.

"Sam and Dean have to go save other people, baby," Sabine said, running a hand over her daughter's hair. Dean studied his little brother's face.

_Sam Winchester crumbles in three… two…_

"But I want my Sammy!" Maddy pouted. "Can't we keep him?"

_One_.

Dean tried to contain his smirk as Sam gathered the little blonde in his arms and hugged her tightly, murmuring to her. He would have listened in – you know, for blackmail – but at that moment David came out the front door and motioned for Dean.

"What's up?" he asked, making his way up the stairs to join David on the front porch.

* * *

"I don't want you to go, Sam," Maddy whimpered, securing her arms around his neck. Sam's heart was either melting or breaking – maybe both, he wasn't sure. "I'm gonna miss you."

"I know. I'll miss you, too," he said. "But, hey – you can call me whenever you want."

"And they can come visit," Sabine added, rubbing Maddy's back. Sam looked at her, surprised. She smiled. "Whenever you need a break. Just give us a call, and I'll have something chocolate waiting for you."

* * *

"I don't know how to thank you boys," David said. "If it hadn't been for you, I don't think my family would still be alive – and Sabine can tell you, I would have been no help. I've never held a gun in my life," he admitted with a smile. Dean grinned back. Why did David have to be so damned _likeable_?

"It was no problem."

"Still… I would feel better giving you something in return for your assistance," David said. He reached into an inner pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out a checkbook and a pen, and scribbled for a moment before tearing a check off and handing it to Dean.

Dean took one glance at the amount of money written on the check, and nearly choked. _Ten_ thousand _dollars?_

"David, man, I can't take this," he said, ignoring the protests of the ever-present devil on his shoulder, and giving the snoozing angel on the other shoulder firm commands to beat the sunovabitch with his harp until he was rendered unconscious. As much as Dean enjoyed Greed – it was his favorite after Lust, with Gluttony in a close third – this was not the time.

"You're not taking it, I'm giving it to you," David replied. "Consider it payment if you must."

"No. Look, you let us stay in your house, you fed us, and… come on man, you saved my brother. That's more than I could ever ask for from anyone. Keep your money," he said, handing the check back to David as his shoulder-devil sobbed over the surrender of ten thou.

* * *

A few minutes later the Impala was all packed and ready to go, Maddy was placated, and Kate and Bryce had come out to give their farewells (which had included a lot of hugging; something Dean wished he could be much more disturbed about than he was) as Sabine dashed inside, saying that she'd forgotten something.

"Hey, Poker Alice," Dean called out, stopping Bryce on her way back inside after her sisters. "Call me when you hit eighteen – we're going to Vegas."

A huge grin spread across the girl's face.

"Sure. But we're splitting seventy-thirty, in _my_ favor."

"Fifty-fifty."

"Sixty-forty – final offer."

"Con artist."

"Don't I know it," Bryce smirked, giving one last wave before trotting inside. Sam grinned at his brother.

"She's as bad as you."

"Dude, she's _worse_ than me. And she's not even eleven yet." Try as he might, Dean couldn't mask the admiration in his voice. Bryce Harvey was going to be unstoppable in Vegas.

A second later Sabine reappeared, carrying a huge aluminum tin of brownies and a large, hastily gift-wrapped object which she handed to Sam and Dean respectively. Sam refrained from diving into the brownies right away, instead saying a quick "thank you" and stashing the chocolaty goodness in the backseat. Dean just gave Sabine a suspicious look as he regarded the thing in his hands.

"Well, open it!" she commanded, almost bouncing with excitement. Reverting back to a child-at-Christmas mentality – for really, who can stand holding a gift-wrapped object for more than a few moments before ripping into it? – Dean tore the paper away, and felt a beaming smile appear on his face.

He snuggled the flamethrower to his chest.

"I figure you can get more use out of it than I do," Sabine said. "Just don't use it inside, or around anything that isn't supposed to be incinerated."

"Deal," he said, trying very hard not to skip on his way to put the flamethrower in a place of honor in the trunk of the Impala.

"Oh, we're going to miss you two!" Sabine cooed, giving Sam a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. Dean had time to brace himself against the car before she turned to him and did the same thing – a good move, as his knees turned to jelly the second her lips touched his cheek. Okay, the years of practicing his finesse had been completely ineffective. Maybe it was just a Sabine thing…

"We'll keep in touch," Sam promised as Sabine went to stand with her husband, who put his arm around her shoulders.

"Our doors are always open to you," David said. "Anytime you need a rest, you're perfectly welcome here."

"Thanks. We might just take you up on that."

* * *

**Epilogue**

Time never stops.

Places change. People are born; people die. Families come and go. The truth becomes legend, and legend becomes myth.

Oakvale, Mississippi, however, was one of those places where time itself seemed to stand still. The woods still stood much as they had years ago, and aside from new people, the town hadn't really seen much in the ways of evolution. It was still quiet and peaceful; a little-known Southern town steeped in tradition and superstition.

She had been pondering this as she sat on her front porch watching her grandchildren play in the front yard – the same yard she had played in as a child; indeed, the same yard her mother, and grandmother, and great-grandmother had played in.

"Tristan, no!" cried her youngest grandson, Brogan. The six-year-old and his elder brother were apparently fighting over who should be the "good knight", and who should be the "bad knight".

With a heavy sigh, she pulled herself out of her rocking chair, took up her walking stick, and headed down the stairs into the grass.

"Now, really, is that any way to behave?" she admonished gently. "Brothers shouldn't fight."

"But Gramma, I should be Launcelot," Tristan insisted, deep blue eyes glinting with stubbornness. "I'm older. I should be the hero."

"Launcelot," she scoffed. "No, no, boys, I'll tell you a story about _real_ heroes."

"Real heroes, Gramma?" Brogan asked, ears perking up with interest. She nodded.

"Yes," she settled down in the grass. "It's a story about two brothers – friends of the family – who spent their lives fighting evil. I remember very clearly the first time I met them," she said, smiling reminiscently. "It was one hundred years ago to the day; and I was five years old."


End file.
